For me personally I think I will have sort of a unique answer. I started learning with no websites, no experience, and no ideas. The reason I started is the idea of having the influence of what to tell people on a particular subject fascinated me. Just to be that 1 person in the world that has the power to let everyone know in the world what they think about a particular subject. If you can control what everyone thinks (for example, about dog food) then that is power. Even though most of us dont look at that way. If you do have a top ranking site on (using same example, dog food) then you can control pretty much on what is bought. If you had a bad experience with one of the dog food compainies you have the power to reduce their revenue. Well thats why I started doing SEO, curious on why you all did and if anyone started for the same reasons as me.
Originally: To defeat scrapper sites beating me in SERPs. I was putting out what I figured were good sites and services, but some sites were kicking my butt. So I decided I had to determine how they were doing it, and that started me on learned some SEO. tom
cough cough ..... heeeerrrre! There are more factors associated with altering the consumers' purchasing decision than listing number 1 on search engines. You know the old saying "You can lead a horse to water" - I got into SEO because Nintendo made me!
I just wanted to be #1 on Altavista. So I bought a copy of WP-Gold and started making mass doorway pages. I eventually got banned because of the blueline.gif. Soon after, Google came around and KO'd AV...THANKFULLY! And I've been ranking well since.
CR don't tell anyone about you doing doorway pages or we'll get another shoemoney thread happening <smirk>
After starting a small bible study and free sermon website, I came to realize that it was not enough just to publish what I hoped would be helpful information. Somehow I had to learn how to package those studies and sermons in a way that interested people could FIND them. That is what led to my ongoing study of SEO. An interesting insight has occurred to me along the way. It is this: I have to be careful to remember that the purpose of the website is to offer hopefully helpful information. The purpose is not to become an SEO professional. So I need to discipline myself to keep adding CONTENT. And that brings us back to what I read so often on this site — content is king.
Hi, I built a "very very very" , really bad looking site using an online site maker . The site was to collect revenue for sunami victims and was created on 10 january 2005 I didn't even knew that websites are made in HTML then. After about 3 months I wanted to have a form on my website and then the story of how I learnt html . Redid the complete site and I liked the looks . Then I felt the need to promote it . Started learning SEO. In the process , completely ruined the site looks with all heading tags and bold etc. Came across words like keyword density , meta tags and many more which were literally like rocket science for me . Started getting in this field joined newsletters and forums . I won't call myself an expert but not a new be for sure . Can seriously recommend changes for a site for better search engine positioning . Like those reports SEO's provide for $19... I don't believe I "didn't knew the term HTML" less than an year ago . And here I am today talking to you . Just purchased a reseller hosting account so I can now host others websites . It's a small account and can handle about 30 sites. The funny part is that I now have a "HTML editor" which I claim is very easy . I haven't "touched any other" after I made this one . There's so much more I want to learn but my eye sight does not allow me much. CGI is what draws my attention . Regards jeet
It's kinda selfish, but I became a competitor of an internet forum I had belonged to for a long time. I felt I could do a better job, and built it. You know, if you build it they will come (not). So in my never ending quest for greatness I had to learn ways to help the search engines work for me. I'll never stop learning, even when I reach my goal.
At Uni in 1996 (subject totally unrelated to IT) I built a little website and got it on page 1 of Yahoo. A load of very big companies contacted me and asked if I could help them. I then built up an seo company in my spare time, and subsequently sold it in 2002. Still enjoy the seo game tho...
I worked for a health insurance broker and he didn't have a website. I was a graphic design major and thought "the internet is the wave of the future and this guy doesn't have a website. Built a website. Started doing PPC and started getting 30 leads a day. Then starting reading about SEO. Rest is history.
I learned SEO by accident actually. I started out as a web designer, but nowadays, people started considering SEO as part of their website and I thought I might as well give it a shot. It took me nearly a whole day to understand what it was, but when I started offering SEO Service, I had a lot more customers!